Almost one year after announcing its Cius tablet, Cisco this week finally allowed a few reporters to see the device up close and give it a test run.

My first impression of the Cius was that it felt a little thicker than Apple's iPad. The Cius' dimensions are 8.85 by 5.5 by 0.59 inches (HWD), while the original iPad comes in at 9.56 by 7.47 by 0.528; the depth of the iPad 2 is even a tad less. The Cius is a bit thicker, explained Tom Puorro, Cisco's senior director for product management, because the Cius features a replaceable battery and needed to make room for the necessary components for good audio output.

The tablet weighs about 1.5 pounds and features a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor and 32GB of internal Flash memory. It supports 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, as well as 3G/4G data services. Verizon was named as the primary carrier for cellular data service and Cisco announced that AT&T's service will also be used.

The Cius has a 7-inch screen with a nicely customized Android 2.2 UI. This tablet is all about integration with Cisco's existing Unified Communications and telepresence products. Embedded apps include Cisco's WebEx online meeting product, Jabber for IM, QuadCisco's offering for enterprise social networkingand VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), to provide users with virtualized, remote access to corporate desktops.

The videoconference demo produced good, although slightly muffled, sound quality. More impressive was the high-definition 720p video, which streamed nicely when the Cius was connected by Ethernet cable to the network. Wireless video streaming produced slight latency, but that's due to the bandwidth decrease of Wi-Fi over Gigabit Ethernet rather than a flaw with the Cius.

The Cius is wired to a network via an optional dock that users can purchase separately. The dock comes with a keyboard and handset and could conceivably function as an employee's sole communications and media station. The dock has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, an HDMI port, an SD card reader, and two USB ports.

What really grabbed me about the Cius, making it a tablet worth consideration from enterprises (particularly those verticals with compliance regulations), are the hardware and software mechanisms Cisco has built in for enterprise-grade security. The Cius features hardware-accelerated encryption that must match the software encryption on the device. According to Cisco, the Cius can never be jailbroken (a phrase that is always like a gauntlet to hackers) because of this encryption strategy. The tablet also uses certificate management, WPA2, TLS, HTTPS for clients, Cisco AnyConnect Secure, and Policy Management.

Cius Software
Cisco also showed off AppHQ running on the Cius. AppHQ is an enterprise storefront containing apps for businesses and is central to making the Cius "a dream product for IT administrators," Puorro said.

The AppHQ ecosystem includes Cisco-selected business apps that integrate into Cisco's collaboration capabilities. It also features applications from either a company's in-house developers or Android developers.

Business can also opt to have a private applications store with a customizable storefront that can follow company branding and only features the apps that a business wants on company-issued tablets. IT departments have control over app deployment with the AppHQ Manager. With it, IT can allow or deny access to apps by name, type, source or category.

Cisco currently has Cius tablets deployed and being tested in several vertical markets including the oil industry, education, healthcare, and manufacturing. On the roadmap are tablets customized for specific verticals such as ruggedized for manufacturing or designed for the sterilization requirements needed for healthcare facilities.

The Cius is scheduled for global availability on July 31. Pricing has been announced as "under $750." Free access to the Basic level of AppHQ is included. There has been no pricing announced yet for the docking station.

The Cius tablet and AppHQ are Cisco's way of addressing the concern IT departments have had with more and more people using consumer mobile devices in the workplace. Those issues are ones of security, lack of compliance, and even greater lack of control for IT over such devices.

About the Author

Samara Lynn has nearly twenty years experience in Information Technology; most recently as IT Director at a major New York City healthcare facility. She has a Bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College, several technology certifications, and she was a tech editor for the CRN Test Center.
With an extensive, hands-on background in deploying and manag... See Full Bio

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